Knowledge doubled in the 17th and 18th centuries due to new technologies such as the printing press, leading to better opportunities for vastly more people. The feudal system in Europe gave way to personal empowerment, democracy, responsive social institutions and ever-expanding economic opportunities. Today, according to IBM, knowledge is doubling every 12 hours.

The Need for Better Knowledge Management

Access to the Internet will reach most of Earth’s 8 billion inhabitants in the next few decades. During this time the number of educated people and information will increase dramatically. According to Brainspace, organizations with more than 1,000 knowledge workers waste over $5 million a year due to unproductive searching. In the future, petabytes of data will be ignored or underutilized due inadequate knowledge management systems.

The Information Age & the Knowledge Economy

Today, knowledge is considered the.

The following infographic by Brainspace shows old school or “Classic KM” vs. “Cutting-Eduge KM”.

Software for Knowledge Management & Profit

There are so many ways knowledge is being produced, analyzed, and utilized, that a few examples show the great diversity of software applications that are helping people, businesses, and organizations manage knowledge:

Quora, a website that poses questions that are answered by users, has just created a “Q&A bounty hunters program” that will award knowledge prizes. Quora is turning its 80 million visitors into knowledge workers.

Leaders of large companies are looking to leverage knowledge and technologies to create new software applications for their markets.

Cipher Systems has just launched a new knowledge management software solution called “Knowledge 360,” offering competitive intelligence and knowledge organization.

PayPal is now using predictive data analytics to analyze transactions and identify fraudulent transactions.